Feds won't budge on talks, Algonquins say

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The Algonquins of Barriere Lake are disappointed and frustrated at the absence of any progress between them and the federal Department of Indian Affairs regarding a key resource management agreement that remains in limbo.

Chances are that blockades will go up as they did a decade or more ago to prevent logging on traditional Algonquin territory, said Grand Chief Carol McBride Nov. 20.

McBride has been appointed by Barriere Lake to represent the community in negotiations with the government,

Barriere Lake claims the feds are failing to honor a commitment to complete the trilateral agreement signed with them and Quebec, which is supposed to create and implement an integrated resource management plan (IRMP) for the La Verendrye Park region. The agreement was meant to harmonize commercial work with the traditional practices of the Native people, to conserve and protect the environment, and share the wealth from resource extraction.

The government, however, has withdrawn on the basis it has spent too much money, and it blames delays to implementation on the Algonquins.

The Barriere Lake band says only another $750,000 to $800,000 is needed to complete the plan. They say if it is dropped now, large sums of money already spent have been wasted.

Recently the Algonquins' hopes were briefly raised then dashed when Ottawa instructed them to present a work plan to the Quebec regional office of the department, which was done, only to have the government maintain its refusal to negotiate a conclusion to the agreement.

The meeting in Hull with the regional officials who called them together "wasn't very progressive," said McBride.

On Nov. 9, she said, they met with Jerome La Pierre, regional director general of Indian Affairs, along with Andre Cote, associate regional director general and Sylvie Ratte, a special representative for the federal government who has been involved with the trilateral agreement.

"They said they would not fund what was needed, but they would have to do some exercises within the regional budget . . . to be able to come up with an amount, but they would not be able to cover all the amount.

"The other thing was, we were very disturbed on their attitude. They said they would provide us some funding, but not under the framework of the trilateral agreement.

"What's really surprising is that as of July 31 they were still paying for activities under the trilateral agreement, and now we were so shocked by the comment that they made there that they weren't signatory to [it]. And what our legal advisor had told them, 'of course you are, you know, are you stupid?'"

McBride said she was "flabbergasted" and "just couldn't believe it."

Another thing they were told was that to get any more money, the chief of Barriere Lake would have to sign a letter "concurring that this would be the last sum of money" they would get.

She said the tone of the meeting pretty well reflected the attitude expressed in a letter from Minister Nault to Quebec Minister Guy Chevrette about the matter.

As for their recently revised work plan, La Pierre allegedly told them they had allocated too much cash for consultants and professional fees. McBride said she was told "you know the minister's position on consultants."

"Nault doesn't like it that they [Barriere Lake] have consultants around them, while Indian Affairs has the whole Department of Justice," she said.

In addition, the Algonquins' work plan, which deals with wildlife management and their hunting and gathering culture, has a provision for their special representative [McBride] to spend a day looking over the wildlife report. She said the gap between the government side and their own was revealed when Andre Cote allegedly asked why the special representative has to know anything about wildlife.

No one in the government could be reached for comment. A letter dated Oct. 3 and posted on Indian Affairs' Web site states, "There are important steps to be taken with the governent of Quebec and INAC's Quebec regional office before any meeting with the deputy minister can prove useful. The central and key issue is the completion of the Integrated Resource Management Plan.

An accompanying "backgrounder" document revised Nov. 15 sets out the government's views, culminating in a directive for Barriere Lake to "open discussions with both the government of Quebec and INAC's regional office in order to attempt to resolve the issue of funding and completion for the IRMP." The document's reference to time ends in September and it does not acknowledge any meeting has taken place since then.

Subsequent to the Nov. 9 meeting, McBride again met with the community. Chief Harry Wawatie of Barriere Lake wrote Guy Chevrette, Quebec's Indian Affairs minister, requesting a meeting with him, but no reply had been received by press time.

The grand chief is meeting with the band again in the last week of November to talk over their options.

The Algonquins say it may be a long hard winter in logging towns such as Grand Remous, Maniwaki, Mont Laurier and Val d'Or with the mills shut down.

"As soon as they run out of 'measures to harmonize areas' there's no more cutting."

This is particularly regrettable, said McBride, because relations between Natives and the logging companies, which include Domtar, Bowater, Louisiana Pacific, Bois Omega, Commonwealth Plywood and Scierie Davidson, have been very co-operative recently. Some of the companies had asked the provincial government to help solve the dispute.

On Oct. 18, Chevrette wrote to Nault saying, "We have invested too much to stop this planning work only a few months before it is realized. I am therefore asking you to personally intervene."

To draw attention to their cause, as well as to highlight what McBride termed the "desperate" living conditions of the people of Barriere Lake, a group from Barriere Lake went to Ottawa for two weeks in October and camped out briefly on Parliament Hill. When the RCMP aked them to withdraw to their other camp on Victoria Island they complied, in the hope the RCMP would be able to broker a meeting with Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault or the deputy minister.

Nault has consistently refused to meet with them and did not even respond to a request by the Elders who made the trip to Ottawa.

McBride said she had previously met with Nault and had believed he was sincere when he told her that traditional activities and economic development hinge on completion of the integrated resource management plan.

But now she said she suspects the minister's recalcitrance is tied to pressuring them to sign onto the comprehensive claims process. Barriere Lake, along with the Algonquin bands at Wolf Lake and Temiskaming, have refused to extinguish their Aboriginal title through signing on to the comprehensive claims policy as the government wants.